When a Tigress Goes Dark
by Caesia
Summary: Tigress never promised that she would be a hero. Just that she would be a blonde.


" _So you suited up...but as Tigress?_ "

" _Artemis was Wally's partner. I need some distance. I need a change. So let's see how Tigress does._ "

" _As a hero?_ "

" _As a blonde._ "

* * *

"Down!" the guard screamed moments before the exploding pellets hit the ground-where true to their name-they exploded.

Tigress was practically growling. This wasn't how the mission was supposed to go. Her informant had promised that there wouldn't be any invisible alarms. And yet, _there had been invisible alarms_. Maybe she should have expected it. Information was terribly easy to get wrong.

It didn't matter much. She had enough experience to be flexible.

Plans would always change.

* * *

"Are certain that it's her?" Aqualad asked, unable to bring himself to say the name of his former teammate. Everything had gone well for the first month after Wally's death. And then one day Artemis had just dropped off the grid.

That was when Tigress began to show up all over the criminal grid. She was a mercenary for hire, and a good one at that.

" _I hacked the feed. It's definitely her_ ," Nightwing's voice came over the comm. He'd agreed to get back into the hero business until they could bring Tigress in. It was a very personal mission for all of the Team. " _I'm four minutes out._ "

Aqualad sighed and rubbed his forehead with his finger tips before responding, "I'm mobilizing Alpha and Beta teams now," his voice betrayed the tiredness that he was trying to hide. It'd been weeks of long nights and longer days for the Team. Tigress was their top priority at the moment, but she knew all of their tactics. And all of their weaknesses.

That was what happened, when a teammate turned bad.

And this time, it wasn't for an undercover mission.

* * *

The building was dark and smelled of smoke and cleaning products. It was a science research facility, though not a particularly well known one. And Nightwing couldn't figure out why on earth Tigress was targeting it. But it wasn't hard to find where in the building she was. She'd left behind a trail of wounded guards throughout the hallways.

He reached the end of the trail quickly, having run the entire way. The room he entered was large and full of various blinking computers. It was the brain of the building it seemed. Nightwing was quiet, but the bolas that came flying out from the dark told him that Tigress had been expecting company. He rolled under them, tense and ready to spring the moment he figured out where Tigress was.

"I told you to stay out of this," her voice was a low snarl. Once upon a time she had been the good guy. That was no more, just a distant fairytale that was growing fainter everyday.

"You know we can't," Nightwing said, his voice almost pleading. There were too many shared memories between the two of them. Once he'd trusted her entirely, enough to involve her in Kaldur's undercover mission.

A low hiss was the only response his words gained. He caught a flicker of movement in the shadows, and he flung two batarangs in that direction. His heart wasn't in the fight. That was obvious enough. He heard the weapons dig into the wall at the same time as he felt something very sharp dig into his neck. He pulled it from his neck only to see that it was a dart. With a sinking feeling he realized that it was a sedative dart. Another dart flew out of the shadows, and he managed to clumsily dodge it.

He was better than this, wasn't he? How many times had he been drugged over the course of being Robin, and then Nightwing? The count was high, but that didn't stop the woozy feeling from settling in. The next dart he couldn't dodge, and it buried into his neck also. Unable to stand he fell to the floor, fighting for consciousness.

Through blurred vision he could see the familiar form of Tigress descending from the rafters. She pulled a usb drive he had failed to see from one of the computers and tucked it into her uniforms pocket. Striding over to the barely conscious form of Nightwing she knelt next to him for a moment. "Please, just stay out of this," she whispered almost tenderly.

The sound of running feet caused her to tense, and then flee. Nightwing slipped from consciousness as the rest of the Team ran into the room.

They were too late.

 _Again_.

* * *

Artemis groaned and pulled the Tigress mask off, tossing it to hotel room floor. Taking the usb out of her pocket she plugged it into the laptop she'd gotten, and began to dig through the files. This was her seventh attempt. Even if it wasn't the final answer, she would still try.

She didn't believe that Wally was dead.

She couldn't believe that he was dead.

So far her best hope seemed to lie in particle accelerators, or possibly magic. She wasn't beyond trying either. Because if Wally was out there somewhere, trapped somewhere, and she didn't even try to bring him back, she knew that she'd never forgive herself. Hell, she could barely live with herself as it was.

Going against the Team hadn't been her first option. But the things she needed to do, the places she needed to go, the Team wouldn't have agreed with. And they obviously didn't agree with it. She'd never told them why she was doing it though. So far they seemed to think that she was some sort of mercenary for hire (which couldn't have been farther from the truth), but she wasn't going to waste time trying to explain her real purpose to them.

Scrolling through the files one name kept reappearing. She was some sort of Physicist who claimed that she'd been able to open a portal to another world once. No one had believed her, and she hadn't been able to recreate whatever she'd done. But it was enough to give Artemis hope. Even if it meant crossing all of her friends in the process.

Funny thing was, she'd never promised that Tigress would be a hero.

Just that she would be a blonde.

* * *

 _So this is a product of too much caffeine and the line 'as a blonde' getting stuck in my head. I wrote it to be a one-shot, but I might add a bit more too it idk._


End file.
